August 13, 2019 6:00 AM
Morning Reads for Tuesday, August 13
Good morning!
- What do Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Trump have in common with the domestic terrorist who murdered 22 people at an El Paso Walmart? The words they use when they talk about immigrants.
- A lawsuit alleging negligence on the part of the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel related to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak was filed yesterday.
- Another school in Muscogee County now offers free lunches to all students, indicating an increase in poverty in northern Columbus. 58% of schools in Muscogee County now qualify for the program.
- More on the new Georgia law that prevents retaliatory evictions.
- A months-long investigation by the Macon Telegraph shows that Georgia has a prison suicide rate that’s nearly double the national average.
- A Japanese glass container manufacturer will open a $123 million plant in Valdosta.
- According to WalletHub, Georgia is – still – one of the very worst states to have a baby, based on cost, healthcare, access to childcare, and family-friendliness.
- A new oral history project in Savannah hopes to preserve memories of old Frogtown and Yamacraw.
About Author
Teri
Teri Anulewicz is a Democrat who represents House District 42 in the Georgia General Assembly. She previously spent nearly a decade on the Smyrna City Council. A native New Orleanian and quasi-Texan, Teri graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1998. She's been a front page contributor since 2015, and she compiles each Tuesday's Morning Reads.
20 Comments
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Teri,
Now do the Dayton shooter and his affinity for Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, antifa, socialism, and far-left ideology.
Thanks.
You’ve got the time to post so you have the time to make your point directly about language guiding action.
Admittedly, I’ve been a little too busy to pay rapt attention to the news cycle, but did the Dayton shooter release a manifesto expressly stating that he was motivated by “antifa, socialism, and far-left ideology”?
From everything I’ve read, he sounds like a disgusting misogynist.
All the facts aren’t in, but I suspect it will be determined the Dayton shooter had mental illness issues.
Is the racism of the El Paso shooter a mental illness?
The whole track of conversation abt mental health is off-track to me. Murderers are not psychologically healthy- period. That doesn’t mean that choice wasn’t involved as well. Disease and intent are inextricably intertwined.
But that just means that we have to lay the foundations for mental health wherever we can. For instance, Virginia and New York both passed laws last year (?) mandating mental health education classes in schools. A few curricular hours focused on self-examination of mental health skills. Just one possible albeit small piece.
As for the Dayton murderer, his motives seem quite unclear yet, with stories all over the place, especially regarding his sister, which seems like a critical focus point.
But he did apparently identify with violent anarchic ideologies. Apparently liberal democracy itself was too far to the right for some folks in that ideology. So, we should recognize that possibility, and address it however possible. Is it anywhere near as big a problem as violent white supremacists? I doubt anyone thinks it is even a close call.
So we put our resources where they are most effective. But if we allow ourselves, and even these blog conversations, to go to extremes, then Putin is winning, and our social fabric is losing.
The GOP focus on mental health with respect to guns is belied by visceral opposition to Obamacare and the mental health coverage it provides.
Georgia teen wins this year’s Doodle for Google contest, makes it to Jimmy Fallon’s show.
https://www.cnet.com/news/georgia-teen-wins-2019-doodle-for-google-with-message-of-thanks-for-mom/
“We will get to the bottom of what happened [to Epstein}. There will be accountability.”
The words of Trump’s lawyer Barr who demonstrated only three months ago obfuscation, misrepresentation and shielding from accountability in connection with Trump’s obstruction of Justice.
And they think they are going to hold El Chapo…. I bet he gives a guard a few million and is gone in 6 months.
“People shouldn’t be personally targeted for their political views. This isn’t a game. It’s dangerous, and lives are at stake.” – Steve Scalise in response to US Rep Castro tweeting the names of the 44 people and businesses in Castro’s district that maxed out Trump campaign contributions.
Yeah, it’s better to target whole classes of people.
Mary Sanchez points out that money is free speech to many, so publicizing campaign contributions is quoting their free speech.
Exactly. Perhaps our politicians could refrain from dangerous, insulting, and violence inciting rhetoric if political views indeed put lives at stake. Funny how certain political teams want to stifle free speech of those allegedly opposing their political brand and legislative views.
Oh, and stop using the tired excuse “It’s a political attack” to stop debate over elected officials malfeasance. You can’t toss off “political attacks” as irrelevant and declare them life threatening too.
If you don’t want your name publicly associated with donating to Donald Trump… don’t donate to Donald Trump or be wealthy enough to start a Super PAC you can funnel your money to instead.
The names of these donors are public information, as is the fact they donated the maximum amount to Trump’s campaign. They weren’t “doxxed,” their privacy rights have not been violated; what was already made public was simply made more public.
I will say, however, that our rules for reporting political donations are completely backwards. As I mentioned above, if these folks were richer and savvier, they could have made their donations harder to track by dumping their money into various third party groups that don’t have to disclose their donors or abide by the FEC’s limits on donation amounts. If our intention behind the public disclosure of campaign donors is to create transparency about who is funding our candidates, it’s stupid to have a system where the donors less likely to exert substantive influence are forced to disclose while the really wealthy and influential folks can cloak their activities and donations through legal maneuvering.
When I read the El Paso’s manifesto he sure looks like a left wing racist to me. I get a lot different opinion reading the document than what the New York Slimes reports. He was anti-corporations, He constantly blames corporations for the destruction of the environment; he likes universal income and healthcare…that’s not republican….and then he rants on Climate Change ….
“In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.” — Intro to the shooter’s manifesto
I’d also note that David’s comment here comes a day after conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson, and Ben Shapiro started to push back on the notion that their rhetoric helped inspire this terrorist. Not only can anyone with half a brain piece together the connections between the shooter’s rhetoric and the language coming from Fox News’ primetime lineup or the President of the United States, this isn’t even the first time right wing figures have been implicated in inspiring white nationalist terrorism.
The “Christchurch shooter” the El Paso terrorist is referring to is the man that killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand this past March. As you’ll recall, the perpetrator of that attack also issued a manifesto referencing an “invasion” of New Zealand by non-European immigrants and expressing support for white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and calling Donald Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
In 2017, 6 people were murdered when a 28-year-old white man attacked a mosque in Quebec City. During the trial, prosecutors showed that the shooter obsessively checked the Twitter feeds and websites of American right wing personalities like Ben Shapiro, Laura Ingraham, etc.. In fact, the shooter checked Shapiro’s twitter feed 93 times the month of the massacre.
This “well actually he was a left wing terrorist” is a desperate attempt to gaslight people and get them to doubt what they’ve seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. It’s no different from the President – and his supporters’ – attempts to convince people that he didn’t actually imply the neo-Nazis marching at Charlottesville were “very fine people,” despite the fact audio and video of the statement are both readily available.
I apologize for the verbosity, but this cuts incredibly close to home for me as a Jew that witnessed Trump supporters chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and “blood and soil” in the streets of Charlottesville; shootings at two synagogues; and bomb threat after bomb threat after bomb threat called into my kids preschool and my synagogue because the President has given the a-ok for people to be aggressively anti-Semitic again.
As written, that post’s attempt to deflect focus from the agreed-upon racism is itself an insult to the dead, injured, and survivors. And a disservice to society at large.
Now, if you were to say, he was clearly racist, and his manifesto is aligned with the language of white supremacists, and the Pres. and Fox News, but he was also, oddly, progressive in every other way….. that might– might– be a relevant inquiry. But I can’t speak to the honesty of that assessment either, because I haven’t read the manifesto, and I wonder how honestly the media is relaying their interpretations of it. My guess is that they’re not.
But then to bring partisanship into it is another problematic move (unless partisanship is what made him pull the trigger). Note: There are Republicans who believe in climate change and expanding Medicaid, and holding corporations responsible for the pollution they create, as well as there are libertarians who don’t support corporate tax breaks, etc. The monolithic worldview is a real waste of brain space. The comment is just a few broad, assuming, and hollow brush strokes that smells like smeared feces.
The picture in this story sure looks like a stack of ballots with a QR CODE ON THEM.
This would be unacceptable.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/tests-give-georgia-new-voting-equipment-passing-grade/Nvbn0VYDpq1qwvdoUcgJ4L/?utm_source=newspaper&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9255924&ecmp=newspaper_email&
You mean you can read a QR code?
No, but I’d want to so I could make sure that what the tabulator reads is what I’m actually voting. To do that, I need to take a QR reader to my ballot.
Here’s what GA law currently has to say, and note that the 1st Circuit ruled (in 2015!) that “Ballot Selfies” are fully permitted under the law and SCOTUS refused to take the case. I doubt that the GA law is Constitutional, on the same grounds that the 1CA ruled on previously.
A photo of your ballot’s QR code….interesting. Even then the tabulating machine could be programmed to interpret what it reads differently from what one thinks it is.
Following up on my recent comment that the GOP was no longer much disputing global warning….
“Nobody really knows that. There are scientists on both sides of that accord.” — David Perdue, someone that was very likely saying this same thing about the existence of global warning a decade ago, talking now about whether fossil fuels are contributing to it.